Fǎhuá jīng xuánqiān zhèngshì 法華經玄籤證釋
Verifying Annotations on the Profound-Annotations of the Lotus Sūtra by 智銓 (Zhìquán / Nèihéng Zhìquán, 述)
About the work
A ten-juan exegetical study of Zhànrán’s Fǎhuá xuányì shìqiān (KR6d0007, T1717), composed by the late-Ming through early-Qing Tiāntái master Nèihéng Zhìquán 內衡智銓 (1609–1669) of Wúxīng 吳興. It is the only surviving major work of Zhìquán’s substantial scholarly output and constitutes the most extensive Qīng-period subcommentary on Zhànrán’s Shìqiān. The text is signed in its body Tiáoshàng shāmén Zhìquán shù 苕上沙門 智銓 述 (“Tiáoshàng śramaṇa Zhìquán composed it”; Tiáoshàng = the Tiáo River area, Wúxīng).
Prefaces
The text opens with the Reprinting Preface to the Verifying Annotations (《重刻玄籤證釋引》) by 敏曦 Mǐnxī of the Fólǒng Zhēnjuésì 佛隴真覺寺 on Tiāntáishān, dated Guāngxù 光緒 17, autumn (秋中 吉日, = 1891 CE). Mǐnxī’s preface narrates the textual fortunes of the Zhèngshì: “Master Zhìquán composed the Xuánqiān zhèngshì in ten juan, opening the right path for gods and men, setting up the bright lamp for the long night, opening and showing later students how to enter the doctrine of immediate-revelation of the heart-ground. Regrettably the original blocks of this work no longer existed and copies were rare. In the Xiánfēng 咸豐 era [1851–1862], the 彥淨 Yànjìng master, lecture-supervisor at the Tàiyì Méixī Míngyīnsì 太邑梅谿明因寺, raised his heart and solicited funds for re-cutting; but as he was simultaneously the resident abbot constructing the lecture hall, he had no leisure remaining and could not accomplish the project. He took my hand and earnestly charged me [Mǐnxī]: ‘The completion of this book must be by you.’ I was also at that time abbot in succession at Tiānshān Huádǐng, at Níngyì Guǎngrùn, and re-builder of the Fólǒng Zhēnjuétǎsì. Time has rapidly passed; in a flash thirty years went by. The Dharma-voice was in my ears; how dared I neglect the heart? Therefore I once again solicited contributions … and the merit-work has been brought to completion.”
Abstract
Zhìquán’s Zhèngshì is a comprehensive Qīng-period subcommentary on Zhànrán’s Shìqiān that goes beyond the textual-glossarial approach of Yǒuyán’s Bèijiǎn (KR6d0009) to provide doctrinal, philological, and historical annotation. The work opens by analysing the title — “Shìqiān yuánqǐxù means ‘preface to the origin of the Shìqiān’; thus it is called Shìqiān yuánqǐxù” — and proceeds through the Shìqiān with extended doctrinal commentary, citing earlier Tiāntái authorities (Zhīlǐ 知禮, Zhīyuán 智圓, Yǒuyán) and Hua-yan and Chán materials for comparative purposes.
The work is of particular importance as a witness to the late-Ming through early-Qing Tiāntái revival in the Wú region (Wúxīng, Hāngzhōu, Sūzhōu), a tradition founded by 百際昱涉 Bǎijì Yúshè (?–?) and continued by Zhìquán’s teacher 土橋新伊 Tǔqiáo Xīnyī (1580–1650) and by 文獻草 Wénxián Cǎo. This Wú Tiāntái tradition was distinct from the Tiāntáishān-based revival of Yōuxī Chuándēng (KR6d0011) and represents a parallel scholastic stream that produced substantial commentaries on the Tiāntái triple-treatise corpus. Zhìquán’s Zhèngshì is the most ambitious of these.
The original woodblocks of the Zhèngshì were lost between Zhìquán’s death (1669) and the early-Qing Tiāntái commentarial revival; the work survived only in scattered manuscript and woodblock fragments until Mǐnxī’s 1891 reprinting at the Fólǒng Zhēnjuésì made it widely available again. The Manji-zoku canon’s text is based on this 1891 reprinting.
Translations and research
- Shengyen 聖嚴. Mínmò Zhōngguó Fójiào zhī yánjiū 明末中國佛教之研究. Taipei: Dōngchū chūbǎnshè, 1987.
- Shi Hengqing 釋恆清. Fóxìng sīxiǎng 佛性思想. Taipei: Dōngdà túshū, 1997.
- Yan Yaozhong 嚴耀中. Jiāngnán Fójiào shǐ 江南佛教史. Shanghai: Shànghǎi rénmín chūbǎnshè, 2000. (For the Wú Tiāntái revival.)
- Yang Cengwen 楊曾文. Mínqīng Fójiào tōngshǐ 明清佛教通史. Beijing: Zhōngguó shèhuì kēxué chūbǎnshè, 2018.
Other points of interest
The thirty-year delay between Mǐnxī’s solicitation in the Xiánfēng era and his eventual completion of the reprinting in 1891 — a span that overlapped with the Tàipíng rebellion’s devastation of southern monastic infrastructure — is itself a small historical document of late-Qīng monastic publishing under conditions of social and economic disruption. Mǐnxī’s preface attests that even fundamental Tiāntái texts were at risk of being lost in this period, and his completion of the project was an act of conscious preservation against the broader institutional crisis of late-Qing Buddhism.
Links
- CBETA online text: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/X0592
- Kanseki DB